Black Cat Running in Front of Your Car

Spoilers

This walkthrough contains spoilers. Duh!

Goal

In A Street Cat's Tale you play the young kitten to a street cat. After your mother is the victim of a car crash, you have to survive the next twelve days and find your place in a harsh world, unlocking one of the eleven possible endings.
Except for two endings (5 & 6), all possible endings are unlocked by reaching the maximum intimacy level of 7 with one of the NPCs in the game - only one NPC's intimacy level can be maxed out per playthrough.
During a total of 13 days (12 + D-day) you have to watch your health and food meter, while you try to gain ever higher intimacy with one of the NPCs, by gifting them items they like, or complete little errands for them. As you prowl the city, you have to avoid being run over by cars, manage your time and resources, make friends and stay alive, as you try to unlock a new ending.
Once you unlock all the endings, you get access to an additional feature of the game.

Basic game mechanics:

Time - Day & Night
You have a total of 13 days until your playthrough ends. Time progresses by the second unless you talk to a NPC, have a system or info window open, or have pressed pause. Note that clicking outside of the game window (if playing in window mode) does not pause time progression.
Every day runs for about four minutes if you don't do anything. Two minutes daytime and two minutes evening hours. One minute before your time runs out (a quarter day left) a message will appear, warning you that it is getting late.
When day switches to evening, the world gets a bit darker. Any daytime-NPCs will disappear and evening-NPCs will appear.
Note that if you run out of time and don't make it back to your cat-home, you will fall asleep where you are and wake up at the usual spot the next day, with your meters starting at a low 20/90. You can advance to the next day anytime you want, by going to sleep at your cat home.

Health & Food
In A Street Cat's Tale you have to survive for thirteen days. To survive, you need food and stay relatively healthy. As time progresses, you loose one point of food for every second; if your food meter runs out, you loose health for one point every four second instead. Once your health reaches zero, you are dead.
You can fill up your meters by eating various foods, or sleeping in your cat home - which regenerates a certain amount of health and food, depending on the upgraded level of your home.
You can drain your meters by eating unhealthy items, being hit by an unfriendly NPC, being run over by a car, or by not sleeping in your cat home.

NPCs
There are three types of NPCs, cats, humans and a dog. Each NPC has a bar of affection that you can fill up by either being nice (does not work on the mean guy) or by giving the NPC a gift. Once you reach a certain level of intimacy, you have to do something specific to be able to progress gaining affection. In this guide we call these requirements "quests", for sake of simplicity.
Each NPC has their own story, needs, and requirements for you to be able to reach maximum intimacy with them - you can find those requirements in the NPC section of this guide.

There is only a limited number of interactions with all NPCs per day - usually two, unless you have a fully upgraded house, which allows for three interactions per day.
While the cats and the dog are available all through the day and evening, humans are either available only during the day, or only during the evening, which makes timing an important factor.
As long as a NPC has a speech bubble over their head, they are interactable.
Sometimes a NPC stays interactable, but requires a specific object to progress, so timing and managing the limited amount of possible interactions becomes strategy.

There is no indicator what you have to do, but as long as you are on a quest for a NPC, you can talk to them for a reminder of what they want, and you won't loose interactions doing so.

Objects
There are various objects in the world you can interact with, usually yielding an item. Those objects are trashcans, boxes, broken bottles, flower patches, shop stalls. Different objects have a maximum amount of interactions available every day, and different objects yield different items.

If you already carry an item, you can not interact with objects, since you can only carry one item at the time. You will find details on Objects & Items in the appropriate section in this guide.

Items
There are a range of items in the world that have various effects, and many are used to progress through the story. Most items can be eaten, but not all items are healthy, lowering your health meter.
Note that you can only ever carry one item at the time - which one is seen in a speech bubble over your head.
There are special quest items which will only appear if you have the associated quest. Such items can not be eaten or dropped, and can only be handed over to the appropriate NPC. If you are not careful, this can even kill you, since you can not eat when you are carrying a special quest item; and if you can't hand it in before your health meter runs out, you will walk the rainbow bridge.

Housing
You start your journey with nothing but some old newspapers as sleeping mat. But the first character you meet is a rather strange stray cat in a box, who offers you to upgrade your housing, which will grant you various benefits.
You can upgrade your home three times, with ever more and harder to get items. The first two upgrades grant you a higher health and food meter, and higher amounts of regeneration if you sleep in your home, while the third and final upgrade allows you to interact with all NPCs one additional time per day, which is a huge advantage and time saver.

Cars
Whenever you cross a street, a car might come around the corner and hit you, draining your health meter. Be hit too many hits, and you could die. Try to avoid being hit by cars!
You can use the lights of the signals as an indicator to know whether a car may be coming through, with green being save to cross and red meaning that a car is about to drive through.
Either way, keep your eyes open and don't get hit too often. Damage seems to rise if you get hit several times in short succession. If you get hit by a car once or twice while your meters are full, you will be fine, but the lower your meters are, the more it hurts.

Endings
Part of the game, and necessary for a 100% completion, is to play through several times and try to unlock a new ending every time. A detailed list and description of all possible endings is available at the end of this guide.

Black Cat Running in Front of Your Car

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1860241616

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